Winter (Symbol)
The winter season is often synonymous with death or the dark and melancholic moments that typically accompany grief. The speaker describes the fifteen years since the death of her lover as cold and filled with snow. The cold winter symbolizes the sense of loneliness and agony she experiences in mourning. She lacks the warmth and liveliness that she felt with her beloved before his death. Snow also symbolizes the physical distance she feels from her lover, for death has separated them indefinitely. In winter, the snow rids the surface of flora and fauna until spring brings back the splendor of nature. The internal suffering of the speaker resembles the winter climate, where her former state of mind lingers before finding some semblance of closure.
Grave (Symbol)
The speaker repeatedly mentions her lover's grave, alternately referring to it as a tomb. In the context of the poem, the grave is symbolic of the demise of the speaker's previous life. As she notes multiple times, it is not only her beloved that is buried in the ground, but also her emotional link to him. Feeling that her memories of him are beginning to fade, she depicts this division as one that is not just physical. His grave represents her disconnection from him and her attachment to the past.
Memory (Motif)
The beloved lives on in the memories of the speaker; therefore she feels guilty about potentially forgetting him. The speaker acknowledges that the passage of time might interfere with the memories that keep him alive in spirit. Memory is the crux of the poem, as the speaker strives to relive the past while coping with the reality of the present. She finds her joy in the experiences they shared while he was living, but she feels incapable of being happy without him. In this way, memory functions as a difficult thing for the speaker, as whatever momentary joy it brings her is undercut by the pain she experiences when she returns to her current life.
